In the printing and publishing industry, the increasing modularity of manufacturing operations is enabling customization of products. At the same time, pressures to reduce inventories and to keep them fresh are driving a trend toward just-in-time production and stocking. Wherever the manufacturing can be decentralized and distributed geographically, just-in-time production is facilitated because producers are closer to consumers in space and time. There is an ecological dividend, as well, in reduced demands on the transportation system. Overall product cost may decrease with shipping expense. At the same time, however, the challenge of maintaining uniform quality across a network of production sites increases. Minimizing startup waste gains in importance as does compensating for uneven skill and experience of operators. Color is a key variable to control because it affects product appearance and perceived quality.
Today for example, a magazine with a national circulation of 5 million may be printed at 5 regional plants scattered across the nation. Distribution (transportation and postage) generally account for one third of the cost of the product while transit time has a significant impact on product “freshness,” i.e., the timeliness of the information delivered.
Production is as centralized as it is partly in order to maintain reasonably homogeneous quality. Nevertheless, printed color varies within a press run and from site to site because there have been only limited means of coordinating control of product appearance among sites. The scope and significance of this problem is apparent when one considers how much commerce and economic activity are leveraged by advertising and that generally more than 60% of all printing is advertising-related. Analogous problems also arise in other media, particularly now that digital video images can be edited in real time and broadcast directly.
The preceding paragraphs have spoken about parallel mass-production at multiple sites. Publishing is also distributed in the sense that the sequential steps of preparation for volume production occur at distinct sites, as illustrated in FIG. 1. Oftentimes, the sites represent different business entities (for example, an advertising agency, a publisher, or an “engraver”) which are geographically separated. Solid lines in FIG. 1 represent links connecting the sites in the production process. Overlaid in FIG. 1 are dotted boundaries indicating a cluster of pre-publishing facilities which handle sequential phases of the process under Product Prototype 1, and printing facilities which may be involved in parallel Volume Production 2.
Currently prevalent volume printing technologies such as offset lithography, employ a printing “plate” which bears fixed information and is the tool or die of volume production. The tool is mounted on a press and numerous copies of the printed product are stamped out. For technologies such as ink jet and electrophotography the information on the plate can be changed from one revolution of the press to the next. This technological development enables significant product customization and is compatible with just-in-time production scenarios. It also enables process control in which the electronic data flowing to the device are modified to adapt to changes in the marking engine. However, the consistency (or repeatability) of these processes makes them even more susceptible to regional variations in quality across the production sites than lithography and its relatives.
For all of the printing technologies mentioned, there is a common problem of uniform and accurate color reproduction. Analogous problems also exist in other media for distributing color graphic or image content, such as CDROM or the Internet. Consider an advertiser in New York, physically removed from the five production sites mentioned above, or the more numerous sites that may be involved in the future. There is a keen interest in having the product portrayed in as faithful an accord with the advertiser's artistic conceptions as possible, even when the ad is to appear in different publications printed on different substrates by different machinery or in the same publication disseminated through different media.
Today, the approval cycle, the means by which print buyer and printer reach contractual agreement about the acceptability of product, often proceeds as outlined in FIG. 2, in the publication segment of the industry. Phases or functions of production are enclosed in ellipses 1a, 1b and 1c and key products of theses functions are enclosed by rectangles 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9. The dashed line between creation 1aand prepress 1b shows the blurring of those functions in the development of intermediate products, such as page constituents like lineart, images, text and comps. Prepress 1b on the way to film 5 may include rasterization, separation and screening 4. However, acceptance of computer-to-plate technology will blur the boundary between prepress 1b and production 1c.
The long, heavy boundary line between press-proofing in low volume reproduction 1c and high volume production 2 represent the distinctness of the two functions; the former is carried out by engravers or commercial printers. Note that volume production 2 may occur at multiple sites. Linkages in the approval process are shown by arcs 10a and 10b at the bottom of FIG. 2, where 10a is the traditional off-press proof and 10b is a press proof. The transactions in the approval process involve one or more generations of static proofs which are prepared with limited regard for the capabilities of the final, volume-production devices. In other words, there is no feedback from production to earlier functions. The process results in idle time for equipment and personnel and waste of consumables (paper, ink etc.) Furthermore, it usually does not give the print buyer any direct say about the appearance of the ultimate product unless the buyer travels to the printing plant, an expensive proposition.
The workflow for commercial printing is slightly different from that described above, since press-proofs are seldom used and the print buyer or his agent often go to the printer's for approval. However, the essential lack of feedback is also prevalent in the commercial environment as well.
It is clear that a common language of color could insure improved communication, control and quality throughout the sites of FIG. 1. The common language is a color space, typically based on the internationally accepted Standard Observer which quantifies color in terms of what normal humans see, rather than in terms of specific samples or instances of color produced by particular equipment. The Standard Observer is the basis of device-independent, colorimetric methods of image reproduction and is defined by the Commission Internationale de L'Eclairage in CIE Publication 15.2, 1986, Central Bureau of the CIE, Box 169, Vienna, Austria. Approximately uniform perceptual color spaces based upon the Standard Observer are also discussed in this publication.
Color Space is defined as a three-dimensional, numerical scheme in which each and every humanly perceivable color has a unique coordinate. For example, CIELAB is a color space defined by the CIE in 1976 to simulate various aspects of human visual performance. Color in the next section will refer to CIE color or what we see, while colorant will refer to particular physical agents, such as dyes, pigments, phosphors, and the like that are instrumental in producing sensations and perceptions of color in a human at rendering devices, such as presses and video screens.